27 Apr Episode 98 | The District Church
On this episode of Good News For The City, we spoke with Pastor Aaron Graham and Shiri Yaldin of The District Church about the various ways the church is making an impact on the greater Washington DC region.
Podcast Guests
Aaron serves as the founder and lead pastor of The District Church. He leads the Columbia Heights parish as well as the church organizationally. Aaron has a heart for church planting, leadership development, and urban ministry. He is the co-founder of DC127 and serves as the board chair. Before moving to the District, Aaron started Quincy Street Missional Church in a low-income neighborhood of Boston where he served for five years.
He received his bachelor’s from the University of Richmond, master's at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and his doctorate at Fuller Theological Seminary. Aaron loves to be outdoors, to play basketball, to travel, and to cheer for DC sports teams. He lives in Columbia Heights with his wife Amy and their two children, Elijah and Natalie.
Shiri grew up in Southern California, but has called the East Coast home for the past 10 years. Her career started in direct social services, where she spent her days walking alongside people experiencing homelessness to build relationships and pursue wellness. It was these relationships that fueled Shiri’s desire to tackle the many injustices in her beloved new home of D.C., and eventually led her to study for a Masters in Public Policy at Georgetown University.
While in graduate school, Shiri was involved in the TDC Housing Working Team, the group that eventually became Just Homes. Shiri joined the TDC staff in November of 2017 when the church officially launched Just Homes, to spearhead the formation and implementation of the new initiative. Shiri is a proud middle sister and pretty much always has a serious case of the travel bug. She has served as a small group leader and in various roles on the production team since joining
TDC in 2013. On most weekends you can find Shiri hiking, baking, closely following English soccer, and getting far too attached to characters in young adult novels.